Although natural caloric sweetener compositions such as sucrose, fructose, and glucose taste good to most consumers, they are caloric. Therefore, alternative non-caloric or low-caloric sweeteners have been used widely as sugar or sucrose substitutes. Many non-caloric or low-caloric sweeteners, however, are prohibitively expensive and/or exhibit sweet tastes that have different temporal profiles, maximal responses, flavor profiles, mouthfeels, and/or adaptation behaviors than that of sugar.
For example, the sweet tastes of natural and synthetic high-potency sweeteners are slower in onset and longer in duration than the sweet taste produced by sugar and thus change the taste balance of a food composition. Because of these differences, use of natural and synthetic high-potency sweeteners to replace a bulk sweetener, such as sugar, in a food or beverage, causes an unbalanced temporal profile and/or flavor profile. In addition to the difference in temporal profile, high-potency sweeteners generally exhibit (i) lower maximal response than sugar, (ii) off tastes including bitter, metallic, cooling, astringent, licorice-like taste, etc., and/or (iii) sweetness which diminishes on iterative tasting.
Compounds have been identified that are capable of enhancing or increasing the perception of sweetness of sweeteners. By combining these compounds with sweeteners the amount of sweetener needed to obtain a desired degree of sweetness may be reduced significantly, thereby reducing the calories imparted by natural caloric sweeteners or reducing the amounts of low-caloric or non-caloric natural or synthetic high-potency sweeteners. It is well known to those skilled in the art of food/beverage formulation, however, that changing the sweetener in a composition requires re-balancing of the flavor and other taste components (e.g., acidulants). If the taste profile of sweetness enhanced sweetener compositions could be modified to impart specific desired taste characteristics to be more sugar-like, the type and variety of compositions that may be prepared with that sweetness enhanced sweetener may be expanded significantly. Accordingly, it may be desirable to selectively modify the taste characteristics of sweetness enhanced sweetener compositions.